The value of icons lies in their ability to communicate with visitors or users in a more intuitive and effective way. Jakob Nielsen, the maestro of usability, postulated few years ago1 that “recognition rather than recall” is one of the basic heuristics for user-friendly design. In fact, it’s necessary to “minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.”

Icons are supposed to achieve just that. And this is why it’s useful to actually use them both on your desktop and in your web design. They can reduce the complexity of the design and make it easier to get from point A to point B.

In the overview below we present some of the fresh high-quality free icons which you can use for your desktop; we also showcase free professional icon sets, buttons and vector graphics you can use for your web designs. You might know some of them, but hopefully not all of them. Not all listed freebies can be used for commercial projects, however you can use all of them in your private projects of for you personal purposes. Please read the disclaimers carefully before using the icons – they’re changing from time to time.

You can also scan through the icons-related articles we’ve published before:

Icons for Your Desktop and Design

Air Mail Icons5A replacement icon for Apple Mail or any other Mail application. An old school Air Mail Envelope for that ‘old worldish’ quality that seems to have been forgotten in our inbox filled, electronicly busy everyday lives. 32x32px – 512×512 px icon for Mac and PC.

Camera IconReplacement icon for Iphoto, Aperture or any other photo application. 2 icons included: a colorful lens for the frivolous and a sligthly more down to earth version. Mac & PC icons + PNG’s bundled.

Aesthetica Icon Set34“Aesthetica” Icon Set was created to lend visual excitement to your projects. This set is fresh, stylish and modern, all mixed up in the perfect proportions. This set contains the following icons in 32-bit transparency PNG and Photoshop’s PSD.

WYSIWYG Sapphire Icons39This icon set, as the name indicates, can find its use wherever you might need WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing or similar actions in your applications. The WYSIWYG Sapphire Icon Set is a part of the DryIcons’ WYSIWYG sequence icon sets, the name is inspired by its specific tone colors giving it an unique ‘sapphire’ look.

Social Bookmarks Iconset 251
This set includes icons for Furl, Windows live, Blinklist, Blogger, Lifelogger etc. All icons are sized to 64*64 in PNG format and it’s great to use them on your website or blog.

Overall 400 mini icons (10×10 and 16×16) are available in the set of Set von Dapino73. The icons can be used royalty-free by Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license for any personal or commercial projects. PNG format.

Firefox Icons Packs75A collection of icons related to various Firefox-project. In most cases the quality is much better than you might think at the first glance. Experimental designs are also available.

40 Vector Icons for Apple Products86So here is something to keep you ticking over: a sample of vector icons of all your favourite (or perhaps most hated) Apple products, from iPods and iPhone to iMacs and the Apple Remote.

Mciehle

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